The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

Back Forward Menu

In Edinburgh to-day there are armed men and cannon in the castle high up
on the great rock above you: "You may see the troops marshalled on the
high parade, and at night after the early winter evenfall and in the
morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over
Edinburgh the sounds of drums and bugles." (Stevenson, "Essay on
Edinburgh.")

Long before Louis could write he made up verses and stories for himself,
and Cummie wrote them down for him. "I thought they were rare nonsense
then," she said, little dreaming that these same bits of "rare
nonsense" were the beginnings of what was to make "her boy" famous
across two seas in years to come.

He writes of her when speaking of long nights he lay awake unable to
sleep because of a troublesome cough: "How well I remember her lifting
me out of bed, carrying me to the window and showing me one or two lit
windows up in Queen Street across the dark belt of garden, where also,